Victor Serebriakoff- Mr Mensa
Victor was one of the key people who helped British Mensa grow - 8 years after it started in 1946 there were only four people at the 1954 AG- two of those being Victor and his wife Winifred. At that point it was just a bunch of friends who liked to meet. As Secretary though, it all changed. He added zest to a flagging black-tie dinner club by sending out brochures, appearing on television, contacting universities and introducing supervised testing as an entry requirement.Then he decided that Mensa must be completely impartial with no corporate views, and that anything said by any member should be his or her personal view not Mensa's. The original mission of providing advice to governments was quietly put to one side as no one was interested. The rocket was loaded, the fuse lit and Mensa took off.
I first met Victor in the early 80s when he was over in N. Ireland. Strangely his joking quip that "Irish Mensa was an oxymoron" didn't go down too well!
He was one of a kind and his surname seemed too appropriate for someone in Mensa to be real, and yet it was. I bumped in to him a few years later at a computer games show in London. He and (Sir) Clive Sinclair were walking round the exhibitors- back then Clive was the Bill Gates of the day as regards the British home computer scene, and everyone was basking in the reflected glory. Victor and I had a brief chat. They moved on. On January the 1st, 2000 he passed away.
There is a one page biography of Victor written by his son Mark.
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